His desire to lend a hand also indirectly inspired him to pursue another career.

During his senior year at Lancaster High School, a friend needed a partner for swing-dancing
lessons.

Hines obliged.

And, although he followed through with his post-

graduation plans to obtain an associate’s degree in firefighting and emergency medical services
from Hocking College, he has been committed to dancing since the first lesson.

“There’s something about it,” Hines said. “I can let go of everything and put it all out on the
dance floor.”

His enthusiasm spurred him to enroll at Ohio State University in 2010. (He continues to work as
a paramedic a few weekends a month.)

Hines, in his final year, will perform with 54 classmates — many of whom have danced much longer
than he has — tonight and Saturday in Dance Downtown, an annual showcase for OSU dance majors.

Through an audition, he landed a spot in an original piece by visiting Costa Rican choreographer
Jimmy Ortiz.

The modern dance will be among the four numbers performed each night.

What the 23-year-old Hines lacks in experience, he makes up for in passion.

“Part of it is luck of the gift,” said Tonya Kraner, who noted his raw talent and innate sense
of rhythm during the first swing-dance lesson she taught him at Susan’s Tap-N-Toe Studio in
Lancaster.

“But it can also be credited to his drive and his huge determination to succeed.”

Susan Hadley, one of his OSU professors and a former chairwoman of the Dance Department,
remembers Hines routinely arriving early for a modern-ballet class to stretch and warm up.

“He has the artistry and the skill, but what he has in spades are the personal qualities that I
put in the category of ‘attitude,’” she said. “That sets him apart.”

Hines, a twin who also has an older brother, wasn’t exposed to dancing as a child. He played
video games, read comic books, ran track and practiced taekwondo.

As a high-school senior, he got serious about exercise and worked himself into the best shape of
his life.

His physical condition, he said, gave him the confidence to accept his friend’s swing-dancing
request.

“It felt very fresh and new for me,” he said. “It created a new path for me to follow.”

Hines joined the high-school drama club and filled a dancing role in its production of
The Pajama Game. He took classes in other disciplines, including jazz, ballet and
hip-hop.

Not wanting to reject a full-ride scholarship to Hocking College nor convince his parents — or
himself — that dance could become a career, he studied firefighting at the nearby community
college.

He continued to dance several nights a week with Kraner and compete on weekends.

Per the advice of Kraner, he applied to the OSU dance program while still in paramedic school.
After a rigorous audition process, he was accepted in 2010, after his graduation from Hocking
College.

He was initially intimidated in the presence of more experienced performers — “The whole first
year, I stood behind a girl who knew what she was doing,” he said — but eventually found a
niche.

He joined an on-campus improvisational group, which he helps lead today.

Hines still faces a stigma — especially in the male- dominated world of firefighting and EMS —
but tries to educate others, he said.

“They don’t realize how physical ... (dance) is, how much skill it takes.”

One person who needed no education was E. Gordon Gee.

As president of OSU at the time, Gee chose Hines as the third recipient of a scholarship he
established in 2008 with his own money to help deserving students in the arts and other fields.

Hines, who had been seeking financial help through other avenues, became the second male dancer
to receive the Gee scholarship, which has covered the full cost of his final three years of
college.

“It is a huge help,” he said. “I’d be so much more in the hole (without it).”

Four students at any given time typically benefit from the scholarship, said Gee, who checks in
with the recipients about once a semester.

And he’ll visit the Riffe Center tonight to watch Hines in action.

“He is very talented,” Gee said. “Josh is very devoted to his art but also the university.”

During the piece called
Holometabalo (“complete metamorphosis”), Hines dances the part of a character, he said,
who at “one point is loving with a guy, at one point is in an abusive relationship with a girl and
in another is dancing with friends.”

“It’s about how each person has more than one identity — that people change from identity to
identity throughout life.”